The Self Assembler Saga
by viggen
Summary: AR-11, a Tipharean android with Alita's face and mind, begins the search for her own identity after losing herself. The appearance of Gunnm:Last Order has stumped work on this story.
1. It's Not My Name

Gunnm/Battle Angel belongs to Yukito Kishiro, but this story is mine. If you like what you read, keep your eyes open, there will be more. 

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The Self-Assembler Saga  
by viggen

Part 1: It's Not My Name

The first few moments of her life were spent crashing through a rusted roof and wondering at the receding sky on the way down. The ragged hole grew smaller in those split seconds, as if she had been born from the tainted blue beyond. When she smacked to the ground with a cloud of dust, the resulting daze stemmed less from injury and more from the state of mental confusion. Her brow puckered, she lay sprawled on her back trying to wrap her mind around the event.

"AR-11," someone cried in alarm, "Please report."

AR-11? The name didn't ring any significant bells. Several names passed through her apprehension, Yoko, Alita, various others, but not AR-11. She looked around where she lay, searching for whoever had called her that.

The building was a skeleton, its sheet-metal roof tumbling down from rust. Old factory machines, probably hundreds of years in disuse, accumulated the filth of generations. Towering collections of rubble filled the broken warehouse and pools of tepid water sat between them. Near where she lay, the body of a former cyborg, human parts since decayed, huddled in an ancient lean-to at a long extinguished fire.

"AR-11," the female voice repeated, growing more panicked by the word, "what is your condition? Please respond!"

Alita -she suddenly knew her name with certainty- sat slowly. Her cloak was torn and she had no weapon. She remembered holding a large Damascus steel butterfly knife, but it was nowhere to be found. Beneath her hip was a crushed rifle of some sort, but she'd never seen the like before. "Who are you?" she asked aloud, hoping to draw the hysterical woman out.

"You're there, thank God!" the voice said, as if standing right next to her, "For a second, I thought Chief Biggott was going to have my head!"

"Who are you?" Alita demanded, slowly standing up. She squinted into the gloom in search of the voice. "Why are you calling me that name?"

"AR-11," the woman sounded stunned for just a moment, "what are you saying? Is there something wrong with your system?"

"I don't know what you're talking about! Who are you?" Alita growled, "Come out where I can see you!"

"AR-11, you mean..." the woman's words quivered, "You mean you don't remember?"

"Remember what?" Alita shook her head, trying to dredge up something. Anything. "My name's Alita? Where's-.." she struggled, striking out for the first person to hit her tongue, "Where's Lou?"

The woman seemed aghast, "Your memory... it must've been when..." she broke off. "AR-11, what's the last thing you remember?"

Alita turned around slowly, trying to fathom her situation. It was finally clear to her that this woman was someplace else, somehow. She tried to remember, but everything was a blur. She remembered Lou and pieces of a man named Figure -kind of. She remembered a box, remembered opening it with her own two hands to see... The last thing she remembered... "Daisuke's dead!" She cried aloud, her throat constricting.

"AR-!"

"Dr. Ido's dead!" she ran in a circle, both hands pressed to her head. It hurt soooo much! She fell to the ground panting, "...where... where's Nova? I'm going to kill that bastard!"

"Calm down AR-11..."

"My name is Alita!" she screamed at the top of her voice.

"Okay," the woman responded meekly, "please listen to me. You have to calm down."

"He's Dead!"

"Calm down and listen to me," the woman persisted, "just listen for a minute."

"He's.." Alita croaked, pulling herself into a fetal position in the dust.

"This isn't you! You're remembering things that aren't you!"

"...not me..." Alita repeated around a leaden tongue.

"Yes," the woman told her, "I don't know what's going on, but there's something wrong with your memory."

"Th- there's nothing wrong with my memory," Alita protested softly. "Who're you?"

"My name's Kate, I'm your controller. You work for the GIB."

"I don't remember..." Alita shook her head, more confused than placated.

"These things you're remembering happened years ago, to somebody else," Kate continued. "It was A-1 who saw Doctor Ido die. Those aren't your experiences."

"He was dead. I remember him..." Alita stumbled. Why couldn't she remember? Her memories were her own! Weren't they?

"You're AR-11, and we've worked together for a while now. You -must- remember something about me."

"I'm Alita," she protested weakly, "I know I'm Alita! I don't know what you're talking about."

"Oh God," Kate gasped, "Biggott really is going to kill me. There must be something there. You have to remember me!"

Alita touched her own face. Even though her insides hurt horribly, no tears came away on her gloved finger tips. It was not possible to cry with a face that made no tears. Daisuke Ido was dead, she had seen the proof. But, aside for that single haunting memory, her life was diluted into a smudge of incomprehensible shadows. "Why," she asked slowly, struggling to bring the gallows of fear and sorrow under control, "why do you keep calling me AR-11? That's not my name."

"Just try to remember," Kate pressed, "All AR units have a solid state recall in case of system crashes."

"I don't know anything about these damned AR-whatevers you keep talking about!" Alita screamed, "What in the hell is this?!"

Kate swallowed audibly, "You're AR-11, an elite Tuned agent working for the Tipharean GIB."

"Tipharean GIB?" Alita repeated. "Why don't I remember anything you're saying? Why don't I recognize this place or your voice or something? I don't even know how you're talking to me."

"We, both of us, you and I, work for the Ground Inspection Bureau," Kate told her, "And if you don't snap out of this, Chief Biggott's going to have my head and self-destruct yours."

Alita rolled onto her back to look straight up through the hole in the decrepid ceiling, "I don't believe you. How can you prove I'm not just crazy and imagining your voice. Maybe..." she floundered, "maybe after Daisuke died I went nuts and this is all a big dream."

"No, no, no, don't... I mean, I'm talking to you by radio," Kate continued, "It's built into your body so that Tuned agents can keep in contact with their controllers at all times. I've even got partial telemetry on your body and I can see some of what you see."

"A voice in my head has the same advantage," Alita said, "it doesn't prove a thing."

"But I can also tell you where you are and how to get out of that factory."

"Maybe a part of me remembers," Alita retorted, "maybe that part knows everything and my craziness made it into a figment of my imagination. And that's you."

"Dammit," Kate spat, "I can't keep arguing with you like this. This is the second thing screwed up today and if Biggott finds out, I've had it. You and I have to get back to work."

Not responding, Alita sat still, looking at her hands. One glove was torn. She pulled it off. The artificial fingers beneath were unlike any she'd seen before, sophisticated like the berzerker, but different. This body was not the one she remembered, not the one she wore when she held the box containing Daisuke Ido...

A distant peal of rolling thunder, like a storm on a spring afternoon, stirred the quiet of the deserted factory. Something far off rumbled, sending a plume of dust into the air. There were sounds, small ones, like jingling bells. Screams?

"This is really bad," Kate groaned, "we have no time to waste. It's coming toward the pipes again and the factory troops have already proven how ineffective they are. If you don't stop it, I don't know who will. AR-11, you have to try to remember."

"Please stop calling me that," Alita replied in exhaustion, "I don't understand and I don't remember."

"I wish the GIB had left the A-1 persuasion devices in the ARs," Kate moaned, "then I could get you moving, no problem. But now... is there any way I can convince you..? Least then Biggott won't care what happened... wait, I know!"

"What," Alita asked dryly, not certain she really wanted to find out.

"All that water there!" Kate happily cried, "look in one of those pools of water and tell me what you see!"

"Fine," Alita's eyes narrowed. On hands and knees, she stooped over a pool to take a look. Her face reflected back at her. She had the same dark, shoulder-length hair and reddish brown eyes as usual. Her lips were as pouty as ever. On her cheeks were the familiar metallic cheekbone insets she never did completely understand why she wore. There was also one final feature she did not know. As plain as day, in the middle of her forehead, was printed a large "11."

"You see that?!" Kate crowed, "That proves it! You're AR-11."

"I don't..." said Alita in shock. She didn't understand this AR stuff. Tipharean GIB? AR-series? Kate the controller? She splashed water onto her forehead with a cupped hand and tried to scrub the mark away. When it refused to disappear, she stuck her face into the pool and washed more vigorously.

"What do you think you're doing?" Kate demanded, "That's your ID mark, you can't wash it off. You're not Alita!"

Horror boiling up in her heart, she continued to wash. The fingertips of her gloveless hand cut scratches into her fake skin. The mark lay embedded underneath, untouchable.

"AR-11," Kate called to her, "we don't have time to waste."

"What have you done to me?" Alita continued assaulting the number. "This isn't me."

"You've got that right!" Kate agreed, "If it were you, we'd be down to business by now."

The forehead of her artificial face scratched and marred, but still reading "11," Alita sat back away from the water in a daze. "It's not my face. You changed it."

"It's the face you've always had."

"It's not mine."

"Accept it, you're not Alita," Kate intoned.

"I don't understand," the black haired girl with the "11" printed on her forehead said quietly. "If I'm not me, who am I?" What if this woman was telling the truth?

Ido was dead.

"You're an AR series automaton, built to be a full-time Tuned agent. You were designed with the very best combat programming available."

"What does that mean?"

"AR, it means Alita Replicant."

"Replicant?" Ido was dead. This had to be a dream.

"Alita was a fighting genius. Tiphares needed agents on the surface, so my boss recorded her skills and made the ARs."

With Ido dead, her mind had to be running wild. That was the only answer, "Recorded her skills..."

"Yes, you're a duplicate of Alita with her skills. You always knew that before this whole ordeal!" Kate said angrily, "If only you'd reset your memory like any other good, predictable machine!"

"I'm a copy," Alita mumbled softly.

"Now that we have that established," Kate exclaimed, "Do you think we can get down to business."

"I don't believe you," Alita laughed abruptly. "You're lying."

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to be continued


	2. Rising Juggernaut

This is Battle Angel, my friends, and anybody who cares to read, get ready for the violence. I try not to be too excessive, but war can't really be written cleanly. If you like, read on.  
  
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Part 2: Rising Juggernaut  
  
Alita walked haughtily out of the broken down factory, laughing, ignoring the voice that continued to pry at her. So this is what it meant to be insane. There were no other explanations for a waking nightmare. Daisuke Ido had died and left her alone, hopelessly insane.  
  
Her hand brushed against a square cartridge strapped to her leg. She didn't remember how she'd come by the armor she was wearing, but it fit her body perfectly. Neither did she recognize any of the paraphernalia she carried, even though she suspected much of it to be weaponry.  
  
What in the world had happened?  
  
"Don't you walk away from this AR-11!" Kate shouted at her through the mysterious communications link. "I'm warning you, if you step past that broken wall, I'll have to do something drastic!"  
  
Alita laughed a bit harder and deliberately stepped over the fragments of wall lying in her path. She passed through a channel between two junk piles and made her way out into the Scrapyard day.  
  
"Please, AR-11," Kate pleaded, "Don't do this to me. I know in your heart you don't want me to get in trouble..."  
  
"HA," Alita said loudly and continued on.  
  
It was nearly midday in Scrapiron city, the rambling shanty town of factories and dense, grimy habitation spread out around the mountain of discarded junk deposited from above. Overhead, Tiphares, the sky-city, hung from its massive cylindrical shaft and shined in a corona of noon sun, like some unattainable Eden held just out of reach. Hell-on-earth and paradise above were joined by a series of massive cables trailing downward into the expansive factories from the disc-shaped rim of the sky-city. Factory produced commodities went up the tube passages and rained back down again from the funnel-like bowels of Tiphares, expended, reconverted to junk.  
  
Alita remembered the Scrapyard. She also remembered the loving care with which Dr. Ido had raised her from the endless refuse and breathed life back into her torpid sleep. She tried desperately to find some memory to fixate upon besides his loss.  
  
This couldn't be real. She had to be dreaming.  
  
The blue skies between the heavens and earth were never quite clear in the Scrapyard. Chugging factories emitted a continuous haze of carbonized soot. Coal dust clung to nearly every surface, chronically. Yet, today was wrong. A particularly dense column of black lifted above the jagged skyline. Where she stood, amid deserted buildings, she could see flames licking between smokestacks. Acrid odors, burnt plastics and metals, leached into everything like a settling blanket. Alita wondered why she hadn't noticed it before.  
  
More tongues of fire shot skyward, flinging smoldering comets of shrapnel. Several breaths later, a resounding boom echoed off the nearby building fronts several times in refrain. The aftershocks continued pounded through the relative stillness.  
  
An arm, part flesh and part not, thumped to the ground not far from where she stood.  
  
"What the...?" Alita exclaimed.  
  
"That's what I'm saying AR-11," Kate told her in a high pitched note, "I can't believe you forgot that too!"  
  
Quizzical expression locked on her face, Alita made her way in the direction of the smoke plume. She ignored the annoying voice that refused to leave her alone. People could be heard screaming. People in genuine pain. She remembered similar agonized screams from elsewhere. The memory did not emerge beyond the strong impression of deja vu. She hiked onward.  
  
"Be careful, -11!" Kate sharply warned, "that thing's already hurt you..."  
  
"Shut up!" Alita told her, "You don't exist!"  
  
Where the deserted factory gave way and inhabited Scrapyard ensued, she did not quite know. Old wreckage, caused by time, transformed almost imperceptibly into steaming wreckage created by weapons. Desiccated husks from ages past became fresh, staring corpses spattered with blood. Deckmen and netmen, the reconstituted henchmen of the Factory and its Tipharean overlords, were strewn about like morbid garnishings, their weapons splintered. Buildings were knocked flat in a meandering, block-wide damage path, as if a tornado had ripped a hole across the Scrapyard. Some crater holes through solid concrete, perfectly circular, shined with glassy edges.  
  
"Berzerker," Alita murmured, remembering something she didn't exactly comprehend. She suddenly recalled how it was that Ido died. It happened when Desty Nova set loose the Berzerker Zapan. She started to run, leaping over wreckage with gazelle-like bounds. The rumbles and booms came from ahead, behind a screen of half intact apartments. There were staccato shots, the crackle of gunfire and the pops of point explosives. A weird glow emanated off the black clouds from beneath.  
  
"It's not!" Kate yowled, "we already went over this. It isn't a Berzerker."  
  
"I thought I said shut up..." Alita grunted through clenched teeth. Steel coil muscles carried her across a flooded refuse channel. In a handful of flying leaps, she perched atop a smoking apartment looking down.  
  
"You don't understand, it nailed you before...!"  
  
Alita's eyes widened. She'd never seen anything like it.  
  
Glowing liquid, almost a flaming lava, pooled in a building's burnt out hulk. Scrapyard defense forces, deckmen outfitted with slender cannons and missile pods, rained projectiles into the plasmatic mass. It shifted, the luminous thing, pooling inward in a roiling sphere before throwing off streamers of fire. The runnels slashed like blades through the defenders, scattering junk over the ruined buildings. It splashed back on itself and flowed, smashing its brilliant core straight through an intact structure as if it weren't even there. The building caught fire, then crumpled, bursting at the seams, before it was consumed entirely. Alita could feel the heat radiating upward.  
  
"Look out! Look out!" Kate screamed shrilly in Alita's ears.  
  
The dark haired girl with the number on her forehead startled. She might not have noticed it. The very air around her glistened, as if an invisible leviathan moved to enfold her. Grains of debris levitated at her feet. Her vision shimmered and her hands quivered. The world grew very very cold.  
  
Her electrically driven muscle fibers tensed sluggishly, their contractions deadened. Instinct was all that moved her. The cold became hideous, unbearable even with her artificial body, but she was jumping aside.  
  
She fell away from the top of the apartment, watching the steel reinforced concrete fracture as it contracted in the freeze. A second later, the glowing orb was there, as if spontaneously appearing from a hole in the fabric of space. Cold transformed into searing heat. Materials ballooned and the top of the building exploded with a crash of thunder. The orb ate the structure as Alita descended in slow motion.  
  
"Use your impact foam!" Kate commanded in excitement.  
  
"W-what..." Alita started to ask.  
  
"The button on the right hip of your belt!"  
  
For once, she did as she was told. Her numb hand found the button at her hip. She pushed it without thought or hesitation. White foam billowed out beneath her tattered cloak, forming a cocoon around her body. It withstood a single impact against the ground, buoying her inside, before it split apart in a cloud of fibrous dust. Alita bumped to the ground on her back.  
  
"What in the hell?" Alita cried as she kipped to her feet. Catching her bearings toward a scrap of shelter under a tumbled wall, she ran as fast as her mechanical legs would carry her. Her lighting fast reflexes steered her through the hail of falling wreckage -mostly ruined architecture punctuated by the odd netman.  
  
"Don't stop there!" Kate waved her on, "You're still as close as you were when it nailed you before, when... when your memory went south."  
  
Alita ran on, not certain why she was listening to that disembodied voice. "Nothing's wrong with my memory," she protested half-heartedly.  
  
"Doesn't this prove it to you?" Kate pried. "Doesn't this show I'm not a figment in your malfunctioning brain?"  
  
Once she'd put a building between herself and the liquid flame entity, Alita stopped for a moment to rest. The synthetic muscles of her soft structure body were still recovering from that cold snap. "I'm schizo," Alita said to herself, trying in desperation to reconcile the growing disparities in logic.  
  
"You are not!"  
  
The ground heaved as the Thing slammed through another apartment complex. Broken glass sprinkled to the surface around Alita.  
  
"Okay, if I'm not just talking to myself right now," she conceded, "tell me what the hell that monster is!"  
  
"Now we're getting somewhere," chirped Kate, "We were the only Tuned team available to stop it."  
  
"I don't care about that," Alita growled. "What is it?!"  
  
"W-well we don't actually know..." Kate sighed.  
  
"Then what the hell good are you?! You can't even prove anything you say."  
  
"If we could just get to work," Kate pointedly exclaimed, "I could prove it to you!"  
  
"Worthless," Alita grumbled. When the structure she was leaning against began to shiver in a not-so-wholesome manner, she sprinted off toward the next building.  
  
"We don't know what it is," Kate quickly amended, "but we do know some of what it's trying to do."  
  
"Then what _is_ it trying to do," Alita pressed coolly, again propped with her back against a wall.  
  
"It's attacking the factory tube-ways leading from the Scrapyard to Tiphares. It's a Juggernaut, we can't seem to stop it!"  
  
"Really," Alita responded sarcastically. "The tubes?"  
  
"It's already severed one," Kate told her, "Our mission was to prevent that. But the solid wing didn't help against it and projectiles go right through it! My stupid mistake."  
  
"Whatever a solid wing is," Alita interjected.  
  
"Let me finish," Kate said, "Thank God Chief Biggott's still over trying to get permission to release heavier weapons. If he found out about this he'd be soo pissed..."  
  
"Finish what? What are you talking about?!" Alita mumbled, not certain where her internal logic could possibly have dredged this up.  
  
"If you and I work together, there might be a chance to save both the Scrapyard and Tiphares..."  
  
Another building across the way went down in a ball of flames. A yelping dog booked past with its tail tucked. Alita's eyes fixed on a child's hand and leg protruding from some wreckage. She felt pangs of guilt and sadness. One more life never to be realized. Potential burned into vapor. A life that would not again know the love of someone who really cared. Someone else's Daisuke Ido?  
  
"I'm going to regret this," Alita sighed, "What can we do to stop that... Juggernaut?"  
  
"Thank God, I thought you'd never start talking sense!" Kate cried with glee. "I knew you didn't really want to get me in trouble, we work too well together!"  
  
"I'm not doing it for your sake," Alita reminded her angrily, "I'm doing this because it's right!"  
  
"Well, at least we're working."  
  
"Don't get used to it," the dark hair girl with the number on her forehead grumbled angrily, "this is only for convenience. Now, what does a 'Tuned Agent' do to solve a problem?"  
  
-to be continued- 


	3. Back to the Fray

For those readers looking to satisfy technical curiosity, more can be learned about the Tuned, the elite agents of Tiphares (or Zalem), in the later graphic novels of Battle Angel Alita. An unconfirmed number of androids possessing Alita's face and skills were introduced in those stories. Alita fought and destroyed one of these by the skin of her teeth. Chronologically, AR-11's story happens at around the same time as the search for Barjack and ultimately, just before that final battle with Den. My choice of AR-11 was completely arbitrary.  
  
If you are enjoying my work, expect more;-) Thanks for reading.  
  
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Part 3: Back to the Fray  
  
"Okay," Alita growled, her reddish brown eyes flashing, "As a Tuned Agent, how do I stop this thing?"  
  
"We need more information on how it operates," Kate told her, "hopefully before any of the other controllers here figure out that something's wrong with you."  
  
"Wrong with me?" Alita asked, "How does that help stop this Juggernaut thing?"  
  
"I'll lose my job if they find out!" the woman groused, as if that was the most important aspect in all reality.  
  
"Whatever," Alita allowed wearily, "How do we get more information?"  
  
"It's pretty simple," Kate said, "Your body is equipped with some sophisticated sensors, but you don't have the power to fully process their input. Your interface isn't set to use them, but if you switch it into the Tuned comlink, I can get their telemetry and use my hardware up here to support you."  
  
"And then you'll know how we can stop the Juggernaut?" Alita prompted.  
  
"Maybe," Kate sighed, "If we can learn something more basic about how the damned thing works."  
  
The Juggernaut blasted through a building across the way, sending a powerful spray of metal and concrete into the still-standing structures on all sides. Weakened by this indirect abuse, two other damaged buildings began ponderously to crumble. Then the glowing mass jumped, invisibly, appearing at intermittent flickers in the air, until it finally materialized as a full fledged inferno within another untouched apartment.  
  
"How do I switch my sensors so you can access them?" Alita asked after taking a deep breath.  
  
"It's part of your core system," Kate exclaimed, "I think you just have to want it to happen."  
  
Stunned to silence, Alita shook her head. She didn't have a clue what to do. She lifted both hands and looked at them. Now what? Want it to happen? What was it that she wanted to happen? How could she know? She couldn't conceivably give the "Tuned comlink" within herself a cogent name, place, form or function -let alone with respect to some "sensors" she could neither remember nor feel. It was like someone telling her for the first time in her life that she had a third eyeball mounted in the middle of her forehead, despite the fact she'd never once seen such a thing looking in the mirror.  
  
"What is it?" Kate demanded, "More problems I should know about? Your Tuned comlink hasn't changed status."  
  
"I have no idea what you're talking about," the petite, dark-haired girl gasped, "I can't do what you're talking about."  
  
Alita heard a bonking sound, as if someone had slammed their head against a table. Kate came back laughing dryly in several seconds, "Of course, of course. As if this couldn't get any worse!"  
  
Back resting against the wall, Alita just stood there. What could she say? She was crazy -every piece of evidence led back to the truth. Looking at the black smoke cloud marking the location of the monster her imagination wanted her to fight, she wondered if It was even real.  
  
A young woman, face wet with grimy tears, staggered past Alita's choice haven. She was carrying an infant wrapped in a blanket. The child did not cry. There was a man standing out in the middle of the damage path, where there used to be buildings. He glanced around in a daze, as if uncertain where he was.  
  
Insanity aside, Alita knew what she had to do. Her only spark of clear understanding, the single constant in her life, remained Dr. Ido.  
  
"I have to stop that thing," Alita said.  
  
"Maybe there's something else..." Kate sighed. "Wait, yes, there might be something I can do."  
  
"If you really can do anything," Alita mumbled. She started to make her way back in the direction of the Juggernaut. Maybe if the monster killed her, it would put her out of this protracted misery.  
  
"Hold still a moment," was all the warning Kate gave.  
  
One second, Alita walked along, her attention focused on the boiling smoke cloud sandwiched between the bottom of Tiphares and the Scrapyard. The next second, she lay on her back in the smoldering refuse, her eyes spinning around in her head and her ears ringing. Her arms and legs twitched uncontrollably.  
  
"What the hell did you do to me?!" she demanded when the seizure subsided enough for her to articulate her voice.  
  
"Did you feel that?" Kate asked eagerly, "you felt that, didn't you? You're lying down now..."  
  
"I'm lying on my back, curse you!" Alita moaned, "If that was you, please stop trying to help me." Very stiffly, she began to drag herself to her feet.  
  
"That was your remote system diagnostic," explained Kate, "If you felt that, it means I can help you find your comlink!"  
  
"You can?" Alita said, wobbling on her feet. "Well, whatever you do, try not to knock me down like that again."  
  
"That was the full system shot," Kate told her, "It's designed to help revive you if your system is knocked down and I have to bring you back. I can hit one system at a time to guide you!"  
  
"I suppose I'll try anything if it'll help," Alita admitted. She stooped down until she sat on her knees, hoping to avoid knocking herself flat in the next seizure. She braced.  
  
"I'll hit your expanded sensor suite," Kate began happily.  
  
Alita jerked. Unlike before, there was a tiny buzzing in her head, back somewhere above her neck.  
  
"Yeah," Alita nodded, "There was something there."  
  
"Okay," Kate continued, "here's your Tuned comlink."  
  
There was another little whine, farther away, but seemingly in her ears.  
  
"You feel that?"  
  
"Kind of," Alita affirmed, not certain why she was sitting still for a series of micro-seizures. It amazed her that her lack of sanity was creative enough to wind an array of physical maladies into a single cohesive hallucination.  
  
Kate went on through a short tour, mapping out a network of shadowy spots that Alita could almost feel as connected.  
  
"What is the point of wasting time this way?" Alita asked in annoyance.  
  
"If you can feel this stuff," Kate noted confidently, "then maybe you can set it so I can access your sensors."  
  
"If you say so."  
  
"All you have to do is think about those spots I pointed out to you," Kate seemed more eager by the second.  
  
With a small shake of her head, Alita acquiesced. "Right. This just gets worse all the time." She focused into those shadows inside, seeking something she couldn't quite touch. It felt not too different from fumbling around in a dark prison -a notion stemming from another uncertain memory. In her head, something ticked.  
  
"Alright! Well done -11!" Kate crowed, "Your Tuned comlink has switched modes."  
  
"Doesn't feel any different to me..." Alita mumbled.  
  
"You switched it, but it's not in the right mode yet," Kate informed her.  
  
Alita made the thing in her head tick again, "Sure, how 'bout this?"  
  
"Not yet," Kate said.  
  
Grumbling, Alita did it again, and yet again, haphazardly flipping nameless mental switches.  
  
"Man, AR-11, your insides really are goofed up... hold on, right there!" Kate stopped her.  
  
"Is that what you wanted?" To herself, Alita scoffed, "Everything to keep the voice in your head happy."  
  
"It's worth both our whiles," Kate assured her, "when you see what I can do like this, you'll finally believe what I keep tell you."  
  
"Not very damn likely," Alita hissed, starting off toward the plume of smoke. And the Juggernaut. "Now tell me what we need to do to stop that thing!"  
  
"You need to get close enough that I can take a good clear scan," Kate informed her.  
  
"Close to that?!" Alita exclaimed, her reddish brown eyes flashing, "Oh, no problem. You mean exactly like when you told me to run away five minutes ago?"  
  
"You weren't listening to me, then," Kate defended herself.  
  
"I'm barely listening to you now."  
  
"It should be possible," Kate proclaimed, "from my earlier information, the Juggernaut is actually a carefully manipulated electromagnetic field, somehow."  
  
"How does that help me?" Alita asked, casting a glance at the burgeoning black cloud with the glow on its underside, a mite bit closer with each step she took. The thing responsible had left an enormous amount of rubble in its wake. Further on its path, Alita could see the shape of one of the massive tubes connecting Tiphares to the ground.  
  
"It's a field," Kate pointed out, "That's part of why our earlier attack on it failed. If you move in closer and get me some good data, maybe we can find a weakness."  
  
Alita picked up to a jog, "Sounds good in theory. How do I tell when I'm close enough?"  
  
"I'll let you know."  
  
Not certain what to believe and keenly jabbed by grief each time her focus strayed, Alita trotted through the graveyard of flattened buildings. Human voices could be heard mourning in every shadow. Fires flickered amid the wreckage -likely fueled by components of biological import other than timber. Warm and cold air gusts, leavings of the monster, washed across the rift. A lonely deckman, half its side missing, bumped repeatedly into a wall, saying each time, "mawther, mawther."  
  
Past a broken foundation forming a slight rise, furnace light blossomed. It was there. While Alita watched, the plasmatic orb scattered yet another platoon of ill-prepared deckmen. They had a large, two legged walker machine with them this time, but the monster slashed it cleanly in half without the faintest pause.  
  
"It _is_ a field effect," Kate suddenly told her, "You're catching the edges right now."  
  
Alita slowed to a stop and crouched, "Am I close enough yet?"  
  
"I'm getting data," Kate said, "but probably not enough to make a clean analysis."  
  
"Fine," Alita expelled a breath, standing up again, "closer it is."  
  
The Juggernaut disappeared through another building and blew it loose into an abstract cloud. Alita shielded her face and ran toward it, an act that defied logic. Of course, sanity was a prerequisite for logic in most circles.  
  
"That thing's incredible," Kate whispered. "I can't tell where in the world it's getting its power."  
  
"Glad you approve," Alita responded coolly. She dodged a falling steel girder with a lithe little jump, then skirted torrents of flying wreckage, as if looking to slip into the core of hurricane. A runaway chunk of tile sliced through her ragged cloak, centimeters from her side.  
  
"There's no question from this that I can predict its movements," Kate cried excitedly, "Computer's beginning to extrapolate now."  
  
Even standing more than a hundred meters away, Alita could barely keep her feet. The energies radiating through the open air sent kinetic jolts along her electrically driven muscles. It proceeded along its path at an almost leisurely pace, taking short detours to ruin buildings and slaughter every inhabitant of the Scrapyard foolish enough to peak out of shelter. It leapt like a flaming draft on a breeze, never quite here or there. If she moved any closer, Alita's instincts told her it would happily complete the job it had almost finished on her twice already.  
  
"Am I close enough?" she anxiously asked. Whatever it was, it inspired horrific awe no matter how deadened her soul. Alita resisted the urge to charge straight on, puncture the core with her body and visit Ido again in the great beyond. It would be so very easy. She took an unconscious step in that direction.  
  
"Yes," Kate spoke up, "I think you're close enough. I'm getting some pretty detailed readings on the field structures."  
  
"How do I stop it?" Alita's eyes were glazed. The orange flames seemed to dance, like a happy blaze caressing a stone hearth. She watched it ruin another building, absently ducking aside the shrapnel. She took another step. The bristling glow looked like a doorway just a hair's breadth removed from reality. A means of escape? Was that the way out?  
  
"What are you doing AR-11?"  
  
"What?" Alita asked dully, feeling no force despite Kate using that name again. It wasn't her name.  
  
"Have you been sleeping on me?" her controller demanded, "if you go closer you'll get destroyed."  
  
Alita stopped. She had not realized she'd been walking, briskly, into the mouth of the furnace. A fleck of concrete gashed her in the forehead, right across the "11," but she hardly noticed.  
  
Did she really want to die now?  
  
She couldn't honestly answer. When she looked inward, she felt nothing but confusion. Was she Alita? Was she sane but with a broken memory? Was she insane but playing into the hands of a schizophrenic delusion? Was she asleep and simply dreaming? Was she dead and languishing in hell?  
  
She laughed aloud. What did it matter if she died?  
  
If she was an android, a duplicate, could she die?  
  
"Alita, please stop this," Kate pleaded, obviously guessing what was in her mind.  
  
Across on the other side of the damage path, near a cluster of collapsed buildings, a humanly form sprinted out of cover toward the demon. All Alita saw was the thin, gangly legs to conclude that it was a child. Running toward the Juggernaut?  
  
Ido's memory flashed.  
  
Something in her snapped. She could have no other purpose but the one which got her listening to Kate in the first place. Alita cried, "No! You'll be killed!" and charged as fast as her artificial legs would carry her toward the running child. Rubble picked up in her wake like a rooster tail. She did not dodge the falling wreckage that got in her way; she simply went through it.  
  
Time seemed to hover in that moment, as if a switch had been thrown and the progression of her life reduced to a stupefied crawl. Everything seemed so clear.  
  
-----------------------------------------------------  
-to be continued- 


	4. Timeless Moment

This fragment has been sitting in limbo on the old hard disk for two months. I write these things when I'm burned out on other stuff, so, well, I guess that's the way it goes. Thank you everybody who has read my work and liked it so far. Stay tuned, there will be more if and when I get the chance motivation. I do not own any aspect of Battle Angel/Gunnm, but I love it none-the-less and I hope my little contributions are taken as nothing but admiration for Kishiro-sensei.  
  
  
Part 4: Timeless Moment  
  
If she challenged the wind, paced a gust and blasted with her own two feet across the savage landscape, she could never have bolted so fast. Rubble hovered against all gravity, suspended at the very moment in a field of motionless dust that seemed trapped in amber. For every strike of her feet into the surface, with her metal and ceramic skeleton threatening to strewn out behind her in fragments, the next brought her tauntingly closer. She extended to the limit of all extension, to the stop beyond which her chariot of a body would simply wrench apart.  
  
The childish form held a pittance of a lead on her, barely a second or two by means of flesh and bone. Still, crossing the gulf lingered on toward eternity.  
  
The monster was coming from the opposite side, a flaming phantom without arms or legs or head that did not lack for malevolence. It approached preceded by an invisible front of ice, and much more quickly than a living thing could ever match. She could see the draft of spherical fire reaching out, changing the intervening world from icebox to furnace in the blink of an eye. It covered twice the ground she did without the faintest effort. Did the child see it coming?  
  
There was a master alarm going off in her head. Part of her arm was missing, from mid-forearm to hand; shorn loose by a thousand solid things not avoided in her haste. She did not care. One life worthwhile existed in this place and time, and it was not her own.  
  
And the child, no more than a preteen boy, had drawn to a stop. He stopped -just flat put on the brakes and simply stopped. He fumbled something from his straggling cape -he wore a cape of all things, colored blue and red. The object in his hand looked cobbled from junk, brought up shakily in that split second before Alita reached him. Was it a weapon? A toy? He also wore what looked like a fabric mask, again blue and red, but nothing could disguise the shock of blond hair that poofed from the top of his head.  
  
Alita was almost on top of him, and the juggernaut too, when he had fully extended his arm and pulled what might've been a trigger. A spring loaded net popped from the barrel, expanding toward the front of unstoppable heat in a paltry show of childish defiance.  
  
Her missing hand forgotten just behind, Alita enfolded the kid with what remained of her arms moving full bore. The kid's feet snapped off the ground behind her as she dug in. She ducked forward and rolled over her shoulder for a single rotation to keep from killing the full-flesh form trapped against her by the force. A wall of fire was coming down on them, faster than she had a hope of beating.  
  
The thready net fired from the toy gun continued to unfurl, but was itself no toy. Seared cords, darkened by exposure to the monster's heat, began to reave apart. Pillowing blobs of white ooze gushed outward from remnants of the torched netting, foaming and fizzing.  
  
With her new passenger bent over her shoulder, Alita had returned to her feet running flat out. She glanced sideways wide-eyed at the progressing froth of quickly vaporizing foam. The formless thermal juggernaut actually slowed against the semi-liquid impediment. It ate the substance released from the burned net and produced a black fog, but slowed none-the-less. Those bare seconds of delay gave Alita enough of margin to get away with her still-living cargo. She could barely believe it; this kid had attacked the monster using a weapon that actually effected it.  
  
Against her, the boy twitched weakly. Alita's collision had knocked him senseless. She jumped clear of a falling girder that nearly blocked her retreat, then blasted through a veil of swirling dust. While junk continued to splash down from recently devoured buildings, Alita had managed to outpace her ethereal opponent.  
  
But it turned away.  
  
Alita had scaled the broken remains of a two story wall before she noticed the absence. Springing high at the apex, she hung in mid-air looking back. The demonic entity had turned fickle and raced off into an untouched building across the way. As if it didn't know she had existed.  
  
Time almost resumed its usual course.  
  
"AR-11!" that persistent voice nagged, "What happened to your left arm?! The telemetry from your hand is dead!"  
  
In the shelter of a half broken foundation, just outside the war zone, Alita finally slowed down. She puttered to a halt, then lowered her child passenger to the ground. The kid's blue eyes rolled in their sockets behind the colorful mask he wore. She knelt beside him and checked him for injuries.  
  
"AR-11, why won't you answer me?!" Kate practically shouted.  
  
"Why the hell should I answer you?!" Alita returned acidly. "That isn't my goddamned name!"  
  
"Oh, thank heaven, you're there," the invisible woman replied, "for a second, I thought my job was history..."  
  
"Then, maybe you'd leave me alone," Alita touched the kid's wrist, feeling a gentle pulse beneath his smooth skin. The sensory of the her remaining right hand were enough to sense that the boy remained healthy. "I didn't attack that monster hard enough cause it sure didn't knock my brains back straight."  
  
Kate continued undeterred, "We've got to find a way to get that arm of yours fixed."  
  
"Don't you have anything better to do than harass me right now," Alita said under her breath, "weren't you taking sensor readings or something."  
  
"Oh, right!" chirped Kate, "I was so worried when you ran in like that, I forgot."  
  
"...And now that I've got a second to stop and think about it, the hallucinations come back..." the dark haired woman murmured to herself.  
  
"When you approached the Juggernaut, -11, I got some really good readings," Kate reported. "I think we can figure out how to be this thing now."  
  
"We."  
  
"There is some stuff we can do..."  
  
Alita stopped paying attention to her.  
  
At Alita's knee, the boy started to stir. His legs jerked and he began to cough spasmodically. Wobbling, he sat up and spat dirt. His wild blond hair was caked with soot, but his bright blue eyes gleamed with surprising intensity. "What, where...?" he gasped and fingered his face, "Ah! my mask." little more than a red and blue dyed bandana, his mask sat askew above and below his eyes. He rapidly worked to straighten the accoutrement, "You haven't ever seen my face."  
  
"Not that I can remember," Alita responded.  
  
He glanced around wildly, "Where am I, fair citizen? Did my ploy against the vile denizen of destruction not work?"  
  
"Your what against the vile what?" Alita's mouth dropped nearly to the ground.  
  
The kid sprang to his feet and struck a heroic pose, "I, the Scrapyard Defender, have vowed to put an end to the fiend of all fiends!"  
  
The other end of Alita's communications link was momentarily silent. Kate spoke up, "Did that child just say what I think he said?"  
  
"Kid," Alita said, slowly coming to her feet, "Do you have any idea what you're talking about?"  
  
"I very nearly had him in our last confrontation," the kid swept his dusty cape around his body and began to stalk out from behind the sheltered section of foundation.  
  
Alita caught his shoulder, "Hold your horses, junior..."  
  
"Do not impede me citizen," the pint-sized wannabe dynamo spun on her, flaring fiercely, "I am on a mission of salvation."  
  
"I don't know what your problem is, kid..."  
  
"I'm the Scrapyard Defender!" he protested, nearly breaking character with a squeaky voice for just a moment.  
  
"...if you go out there, that monster will kill you," Alita finished tiredly.  
  
He pulled his cape out of her grasp and started off again, "Only I can stop the creeping death, the foul stench, the formidable darkness cast on midday, only I!"  
  
"This child hasn't got any idea what he's dealing with," Kate put in softly.  
  
Alita picked him up by the scruff of the neck, holding him so his feet didn't quite reach the ground. "Thank me later."  
  
"Release me, fair citizen," the kid cried, his feet going thirty miles per hour. "Release me so that I might do my august duty!"  
  
"I saved your little butt once already," Alita told him, "And I had no idea I'd hit someone else who's totally insane..."  
  
"You forced me into it, citizen. Don't think you haven't had fair warning!" the kid's hand emerged from his red and blue cape with a small silver device.  
  
Alita's arm went numb momentarily numb. Her fingers popped open against her will and the kid was off and running. His bright cape swirled in his wake.  
  
"Shit!" Alita cried, feeling pins and needles in her shoulder.  
  
Kate was shouting in her ear, "Let him go, we don't have time to worried about that child."  
  
"Not like I've got any time for you either," Alita growled. She flew after the little blond ball of energy. Fight the juggernaut or let the kid die, was there a difference?  
  
He was a step or two ahead of her, moving no faster than any other kid. "Up, up and away!" he wailed, suddenly crouching down. He jumped, sailing straight up fifteen feet and catching the lip of the busted foundation. Impact pistons retracted into sheaths strapped to either of his lower legs.  
  
Alita's eyes followed him. She shook her head. She easily cleared the wall behind him, intercepting him in the barest heartbeat. Her power artificial body was more than a match for mere gadgetry.  
  
"Why're you..." he brought out the little silver device again, which Alita smacked easily out of his hand. She grabbed him under her good arm and dragged him bodily back into shelter. He kicked her wildly in the side, "Stop it, stop it, put me down!"  
  
Alita didn't feel the abuse.  
  
"AR-11, this is getting out of hand," Kate exclaimed. "We have to worry about the Juggernaut."  
  
"Where is he getting these devices," Alita pointedly asked. "Did it occur to you that this kid actually managed to do something to slow the Juggernaut down? If not for him, I'd probably be dead right this second."  
  
Kate was silenced for the moment.  
  
Once they were back under cover, Alita gently dropped the boy in the crook of the wall, "I don't know what your problem is, but I'm not letting you get yourself splattered."  
  
"Why do you keep trying to stop me?" the kid shouted, "No mere cyborg can stand in my way... I've got a mission!"  
  
"Mission? This is stupidity. What do you think you're talking about?"  
  
"My sister said... I mean," the little boy blurted, "Citizen, the greatest mission of the Scrapyard Defender is to defeat the bane of the Self-Assembler."  
  
"-11!" Kate could be heard to draw a gasp, "What did he say just then? What did he say??"  
  
"Your sister?" Alita seized the tiny hint of fact just beneath the kid's facade.  
  
He withdrew meekly, his voice becoming as little as his form, "You... you don't know her, do you?"  
  
"Well," Alita thought quickly, "would she be happy about you out here?"  
  
"Not his sister, AR-11," Kate hastily instructed her, "the Self-Assembler. What is the Self-Assembler?"  
  
"My sister can be..." the kid shuffled on his knees to her, "I wasn't trying to hurt anybody, I just wanted to help out! You won't tell her, will you."  
  
Alita knelt down beside him, catching his bright blue eyes. There was something familiar about this kid. "We'll see. What am I supposed to call you, kid?"  
  
"Then you don't know my sister," he smirked slightly.  
  
"Let's not get too far ahead of ourselves."  
  
"Call me," he paused, obviously weighing the alternatives, "Defender. What do I call you?"  
  
She rolled her eyes, "I'm Alita."  
  
"No you're not..." Kate reminded once again, even though Alita ignored her.  
  
"Now that we've got that solved," Alita began softly, "What is this Self-Assembler?"  
  
"What do you think?" replied Defender. He pointed over his shoulder, giving a flick of his cape, "It did all that!"  
  
  
to be continued 


End file.
